Dull Start To The Week; Software & Metal Stocks Rise

Indian share markets continued to trade on a flat note in the afternoon session ahead of the Reserve Bank of India’s policy meeting on Wednesday.

At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex closed higher by 37 points and the NSE Nifty finished higher by 6 points. The S&P BSE Mid Cap finished down by 0.1% while S&P BSE Small Cap finished down by 0.5%. Software stocks and metal stocks witnessed majority of the buying activity. Losses were largely seen in power sector, realty sector, and bank sector.

Asian stock markets finished mixed as of the most recent closing prices. The Hang Seng gained 0.22%, while the Nikkei 225 & the Shanghai Composite fell 0.49% and 0.24% respectively. European markets are broadly higher today with shares in Germany leading the region. The DAX is up 1.06% while France’s CAC 40 is up 0.88% and London’s FTSE 100 is up 0.73%.

Rupee was trading at Rs 64.38 against the US$ in the afternoon session. Oil prices were trading at US$ 57.74 at the time of writing.

Biocon share price surged 15% in today’s trade after the USFDA on Friday approved Mylan N.V. and Biocon Ltd’s biosimilar for Roche’s drug Herceptin, used in the treatment of breast and metastatic stomach cancer.

Wipro share price fell over 3% in morning trade before recovering to finish in green. It was reported that the company would “vigorously” contest a US$140 million lawsuit filed by National Grid US over the implementation of an enterprise resource planning project which started in 2009.

While, IT major Infosys share price surged 2.8% after Salil Parekh was announced as the new CEO and MD of Infosys with effect from 2 January 2018, for a period of five years. Interim CEO, Pravin Rao, will be re-designated as the COO of the company for the next five years.

The Indian information technology (IT) sector has been through the doldrums over the past few years. IT giants have seen flat to negligible growth in the past 3-4 years. However, going by the IT index performance in the past few months, there seems to be some fight left in the IT space.